Thursday, September 18, 2014

Chennai Airport is “MAA” ; LHR is not Lahore but London – Lahore
is LHE. Unlike
the Motor, Health, Property Insurer – Marine Insurer has the burden of knowing
geography – having to deal with various places in the World. Some lesser known little countries – their
geo political conditions and more …. Heard of ‘Aruba’ - a 33-kilometer-long (20
mi) island of the Lesser Antilles in the southern Caribbean Sea, located 27 km
(17 mi) north of the coast of Venezuela. Together with Bonaire and Curaçao, it
forms a group referred to as the ABC islands of the Leeward Antilles, the
southern island chain of the Lesser Antilles. Collectively, Aruba and the other
Dutch islands in the Antilles are commonly referred to as the Netherlands
Antilles or the Dutch Antilles. Furthermore, Aruba is one of the four
constituent countries that form the Kingdom of the Netherlands, along with the
Netherlands, Curaçao and Sint Maarten. The citizens of these countries all
share a single nationality: Dutch.

Holland
is a region and former province in the western part of the Netherlands. The
term Holland is also frequently used to refer the Netherlands. Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital
of the Netherlands. Amsterdam's name
derives from Amstelredamme, indicative of the city's origin: a dam in the river
Amstel. The confusion is – when somebody
asked for coverage to ‘Netherland Antilles’ – a policy was issued with
destination as ‘Nederlands’………….. Netherlands Antilles is an autonomous
Caribbean country.

When
the Wright brothers or Tata took to the air, there was no need for coding
airports since an airport was literally any convenient field with a strong
wind. Then came the Airport codes for easy (!) identification – not only for
people – more for cargo. Now we have 3
digit codes. An IATA airport code, also known an IATA location identifier, is a
three-letter code designating many airports around the world, defined by the
International Air Transport Association (IATA). The characters prominently
displayed on baggage tags attached at airport check-in desks are an example of
a way these codes are used.

Many
station codes are simply the first three letters of the city name: ATL is
Atlanta, BOS is Boston, SIN is Singapore, and SYD is Sydney, Australia.
Sometimes the city name lends itself to one letter for each word - Port of
Spain in Trinidad & Tobago (POS), or even Port au Prince, Haiti (PAP). Some
you may never be able to say how or why - LGA stands for LaGuardia in New York,
HOU is for Houston's Hobby Airport; SLC is for Salt Lake City, ORD for Chicago O'Hare. In India BOM is Mumbai Chattrapathi Shivaji
International Airport; HYD is Hyderabad
Rajiv Gandhi International Airport; MAA is Chennai Meenambakkam International;
CCU is Kolkata Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose International Airport. Some have suffix X for they were earlier two
letter codes.

Here
is an interesting mix-up as reported in Daily Mail May 2013 – when a couple
arrived in Dhaka, Bangaledesh – 7000 miles away from where they intended. A couple who planned to fly from Los Angeles
to Dakar, Senegal, found themselves 7,000 miles away in Dhaka in Bangladesh
after an airline mixed up their flight. Sandy Valdiviseo and her husband Triet
Vo intended to take a Turkish Airlines flight from Los Angeles to Dakar but an
airport code mix-up saw the couple sent to the wrong continent. The airport
code for Dakar is DKR, while the code for Dhaka is DAC.

The couple flew from Los
Angeles to Istanbul and had a four hour stopover. They then boarded a plane for
the final leg of their journey and did not realise anything was amiss. 'When
the flight attendant said we were heading to Dhaka, we believed that this was
how you pronounced Dakar with a Turkish accent,' Valdivieso told the Los
Angeles Times. They only realised when they saw a map of the flight's route in
the air that they were on their way to Bangladesh instead of Senegal. After
arriving in Bangladesh, it took nine hours for the couple to secure flights to
Senegal. The carrier insisted on listening to a phone recording of Ms
Valdivieso booking the flight to Dakar before they admitted they had put wrong
airport code had been put on their tickets.
There was no extra charge for the flight from Bangladesh !! – and their luggage which also traveled to
Bangladesh arrived in Senegal two more days later. They had to battle for 4 months to receive
compensation from the airline over the incident and eventually were
offered two free tickets to anywhere on
the Turkish Airlines' network.

Getting
back to Aruba detailed at the start of the post, became a separate country within the Kingdom
of the Netherlands in 1986. The rest of the Netherlands Antilles was dissolved
on 10 October 2010, with Curaçao and Sint Maarten becoming two new constituent
countries and with the other islands becoming special municipalities within the
Netherlands. Aruba competed at the 2012
Summer Olympic Games in London, United Kingdom as an independent nation.